The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice
in Post-Colonial Literatures

Bill Ashcroft, School of English, University
of New South Wales; Gareth Griffiths, Department of English, University of Western
Australia; Helen Tiffin, Department of English, University of Queensland

Development of post-colonial literatures

Post-colonial literatures developed through several stages which can be seen
to correspond to stages both of national or regional
consciousness and of the project of asserting difference from the imperial
centre. During the imperial period writing in the language of the imperial centre
is inevitably, of course, produced by a literate elite whose primary identification
is with the colonizing power. Thus the first texts produced in the colonies
in the new language are frequently produced by 'representatives' of the imperial
power; for example, gentrified setlers (Wentworth's 'Australia'), travellers
and sightseers (Froude's Oceana, and his The English in the West Indies,
or the travel diaries of Mary Kingsley), or the Anglo-Indian and West African
administrators, soldiers, and 'boxwallahs', and, even more frequently, their
memsahibs (volumes of memoirs).

Such texts can never form the basis for an indigenous culture nor can they
be integrated in any way with the culture which already exists in the countries
invaded. Despite their detailed reportage of landscape, custom, and language,
they inevitably privilege the centre, emphasizing the 'home' over the 'native',
the 'metropolitan' over the 'provincial' or 'colonial', and so forth. At a deeper
level their claim to objectivity simply serves to hide the imperial discourse
within which they are created. That this is true of even the consciously literary
works which emerge from this moment can-be illustrated by the poems and stories
of Rudyard Kipling. For
example, in the well-known poem 'Christmas in India' the evocative description
of a Christmas day in the heat of India is contextualized by invoking its absent
English counterpart. Apparently it is only through this absent and enabling
signifier that the Indian daily reality can acquire legitimacy as a subject
of literary discourse.

The second stage of production within the evolving discourse of the post-colonial
is the literature produced 'under imperial licence' by 'natives' or 'outcasts',
for instance the large body of poetry and prose produced in the nineteenth century
by the English educated Indian upper class, or African 'missionary literature'
(e.g. Thomas Mofolo's Chaka). The producers signify by the very fact
of writing in the language of the dominant culture that they have temporarily
or permanently entered a specific and privileged class endowed with the language,
education, and leisure necessary to produce such works. The Australian novel
Ralph Rashleigh, now known to have been written by the convict James
Tucker, is a case in point. Tucker, an educated man, wrote Rashleigh as a 'special'
(a privileged convict) whilst working at the penal settlement at Port Macquarie
as storekeeper to the superintendent. Written on government paper with government
ink and pens, the novel was clearly produced with the aid and support of the
superintendent. Tucker had momentarily gained access to the privilege of literature.
Significantly, the moment of privilege did not last and he died in poverty at
the age of fifty-eight at Liverpool asylum in Sydney.

It is characteristic of these early post-colonial texts that the potential
for subversion in their themes cannot be fully realized. Although they deal
with such powerful material as the brutality of the convict system (Tucker's
Rashleigh), the historical potency of the supplanted and denigrated native cultures
(Mofolo's Chaka), or the existence of a rich cultural heritage older and more
extensive than that of Europe (any of many nineteenth-century Indo-Anglian poets,
such as Ram Sharma) they are prevented from fully exploring their anti-imperial
potential. Both the available discourse and the material conditions of production
for literature in these early post-colonial societies restrain this possibility.
The institution of 'Literature' in the colony is under the direct control of
the imperial ruling class who alone license the acceptable form and permit the
publication and distribution of the resulting work. So, texts of this kind come
into being within the constraints of a discourse and the institutional practice
of a patronage system which limits and undercuts their assertion of a different
perspective. The development of independent literatures depended upon the abrogation
of this constraining power and the appropriation of language and writing for
new and distinctive usages. Such an appropriation is clearly the most significant
feature in the emergence of modern post-colonial literatures ...